SAC Capital, Nazi-Looted Art, and eBay

There’s some big news out there today in the world of crime and demicrime. First comes the bombshell: On Monday, after a decade of investigations, SAC Capital, the hedge fund led by Steven A. Cohen, plead guilty to insider trading charges and will pay a kingly fine of $1.2 billion.

The guilty plea and fine paid by SAC, which is owned by the billionaire investor Steven A. Cohen, are part of a broader plea deal that federal prosecutors in Manhattan announced on Monday. It also will impose a five-year probation on the fund and require SAC to terminate its business of managing money for outside investors, though the firm will probably continue to manage Mr. Cohen’s fortune.

For a surreal look into the kind of attention Cohen has attracted over the years, have a look into Allison Hoffman’s amazing piece about a Brooklyn rabbi who tried to swindle the hedge fund legend and got pinched.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, in an apartment in Munich to be more specific, a trove of Nazi-looted art has been discovered. The collection is estimated to be worth almost $1.5 billion and had been held by the son of a German art dealer, who’d once been given the blessing of Joseph Goebbels to sell stolen art for the Nazis.

Focus [Magazine] said the collection included paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Franz Marc and Max Beckmann, and that the trove was found [by] customs officials investigating the art dealer’s son, Cornelius Gurlitt, for suspected tax evasion.

Speaking of Nazis (sigh), the auction site eBay, where people sell their old jeans, the occasional fighter plane, and Chai necklaces as Navajo Moose apologized after it came under fire for selling Nazi memorabilia on its site. What was being sold and what was the company earning 10% from? Well…

Among the items being offered for sale were a complete Auschwitz uniform, yellow Stars of David armbands worn by Jews during World War II, a Holocaust victim’s suitcase and a pair of shoes belonging to a death camp victim.